Willie's entourage

CORRECTION: June 24, 2011Lee Brice's marital status was misstated in the print and initial online versions of this article. The error has been corrected.

Lee Brice has hung out on Willie Nelson's bus.

"It's fun," Brice said. "It's exactly what you'd expect it to be. It's really cool being out here with a legend like him."

However, the real reward of touring with Willie Nelson's Country Throwdown - a caravan of 12 mostly young and evolving country-music singers, songwriters and musicians - is exchanging ideas.

"It's also really cool being out here with a bunch of buddies," Brice said during a recent off-day in Greenville, S.C., where he lives. "All these guys out here I'm becoming friends with. I appreciate that he (Nelson) has so many songwriters. What's so great is it gives them an avenue to go ahead and play shows on a big stage. With Willie, it's such a big stage."

They'll play - Nelson, 78, and his Family Band are headlining - Sunday as the seventh summer concert series opens at Ironstone Amphitheatre in Murphys.

There'll be a Bluebird Cafe - named for the famous Nashville, Tenn., music venue - where acoustic artists perform. Lukas Nelson, Willie's 22-year-old son, and his band, Promise of the Real, play the "big" stage.

Brice, 31, said he'd worked on "two or three songs yesterday" with Jamey Johnson, Randy Houser and Craig Campbell. They might want to stay close to him.

Brice co-wrote role model Garth Brooks' "More Than a Memory," which debuted at No. 1 in 2010, and has had songs recorded by Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean and the Eli Young Band, which performed "Crazy Girl" (written by Brice and Liz Rose) on June 4 at Stockton's Weber Point Events Center.

"Love Like Crazy," Brice's 2010 debut album, and its title tune were nominated for five country-music awards. The single was on Billboard magazine's country chart for 55 weeks.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy," Brice said with a laugh. "Guess I have a crazy thing for crazy women."

"Love Like Crazy," written by Doug Johnson and Tim James, became a form of vindication.

"I was so excited about that," Brice said. "I heard that song eight years ago. I wanted it to be a single forever. I was like, 'I'm telling ya. It's a hit.' "

He's moving on, though, getting songs ready for a second album. The first single?

" 'Beer,' " Brice said. "I'm trying to get it out soon. It's an anthem kind of song. A guy's song."

Touring with Nelson, a country-music titan for 55 years, has been a source of inspiration.

"I mean, 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain?' " Brice said. "That's the stuff I grew up on. Amazing songs. He's just an amazing artist. He's a guitar-playing fool. Willie can do whatever he wants to do."

Born in Sumter, S.C., Brice always was doing music.

"The earliest memory I had as a kid, a child, was as a baby stepping on the piano and just playing for hours," said Brice, who got his first guitar at 10. "I never stopped. I took it seriously. I had to. It was in me. Something I just had to do."

His grandmother taught him piano, so he applied that to shaping guitar chords. He never took lessons: "I don't recommend that. If I had, I'd be a better guitar player than I am."

Brice and his dad - Kenny, an electrician - sang in church. Brice played in his high school band and started writing songs: "Truth is, I wrote about my daddy's huntin' dogs. And my girlfriend."

An all-state linebacker and offensive lineman, the 6-foot-3, 280-pound Brice played football for 18 months at Clemson University, earning a scholarship but "wearing out all the cartilage" in his right arm and ending his athletic career. A center, he snapped the ball on punts and placement kicks.

"I wasn't the biggest or the fastest," Brice said. "So I tried to be smart and dig into what the coaches were doing."

He also was playing and singing in Twelve Bridges, a band that mixed some original material with "everything from old country to Guns 'N Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker. We did it all, man."

He also realized people were "coming to see my songs and felt they were their songs."

That insight led him to Nashville, where writing songs is almost a 9-to-5 deal.

He met a "couple" of people and "started working. Writing songs every day. At the house. In the office. On the porch. The rest is history. I still worked my butt off on the road. Next thing you know, I met enough people and it started rolling. It's kind of random. You just try to work and hope something happens."

For Brice, it was having songs - "Beautiful High" and "Not Every Man Lives" - recorded by Sister Hazel, a rock band from Gainesville, Fla., and Aldean, a country singer from Macon, Ga.

"It's an honor," said Brice, whose early influences included Brooks, Alabama, Brian McKnight, Boyz II Men and Aerosmith. "It was, like, cool. Like I'd officially arrived. It gave me a little inspiration."

He's providing some of that for his younger brother Lewis, 25, an aspiring Nashville singer-songwriter.

"He cut a record on his own in one day," said Brice, a single father with a son. "There are a lot of similarities. He's a lot more edgy. Rock. Pop. It's all cool."

Songwriting - often writing to order - is as important in Music City as performing: "I've always done my own songs. That's always been what I love about it. I write stuff and I sing it most of the time. I cut what I wanna cut."

Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com.

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